CVE-2023-3817 - CVE House
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Status published Unknown CVE-2023-3817

Excessive time spent checking DH q parameter value

Vulnerability Description

Issue summary: Checking excessively long DH keys or parameters may be very slow. Impact summary: Applications that use the functions DH_check(), DH_check_ex() or EVP_PKEY_param_check() to check a DH key or DH parameters may experience long delays. Where the key or parameters that are being checked have been obtained from an untrusted source this may lead to a Denial of Service. The function DH_check() performs various checks on DH parameters. After fixing CVE-2023-3446 it was discovered that a large q parameter value can also trigger an overly long computation during some of these checks. A correct q value, if present, cannot be larger than the modulus p parameter, thus it is unnecessary to perform these checks if q is larger than p. An application that calls DH_check() and supplies a key or parameters obtained from an untrusted source could be vulnerable to a Denial of Service attack. The function DH_check() is itself called by a number of other OpenSSL functions. An application calling any of those other functions may similarly be affected. The other functions affected by this are DH_check_ex() and EVP_PKEY_param_check(). Also vulnerable are the OpenSSL dhparam and pkeyparam command line applications when using the "-check" option. The OpenSSL SSL/TLS implementation is not affected by this issue. The OpenSSL 3.0 and 3.1 FIPS providers are not affected by this issue.

Impact Analysis

Refer to official advisory for detailed impact metrics.

Remediation

Ensure systems are updated to the latest vendor-supplied patch levels.

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Credits & Attribution

The following person or organization is credited with identifying this vulnerability, as recorded in the NVD database:

  • Bernd Edlinger
  • Tomas Mraz

Affected Vendor

Affected Software

OpenSSL
Vulnerable Versions:
3.1.0, 3.0.0, 1.1.1, 1.0.2

Timeline

Official Publish: July 31st, 2023
Last Modified: May 5th, 2025
Added to House: July 22nd, 2026

CVSS Vectors

No vector data available

Weaknesses (CWE)

MITRE ATT&CK TTPs

No associated TTPs found for this vulnerability.